Fighting for fair competition: blood doping – a persistent challenge and smart approaches to detect it

Doping with blood, erythropoietin or related substances is an unfair practice in sports and is performed to obtain an advantage over competing athletes. Doping control has made great progress in detecting the use of forbidden substances by employing completely new strategies that no longer rely on the detection of the banned substance itself. What is measured instead are the changes that forbidden doping practice has on haematological parameters.